It's too bad Luigi Pirandello isn't around to give notes to the CW about its new series, "Cult." But even without the 20th century playwright and no matter how absurd it is, "Cult" is just goofy enough to work, especially for the cable channel's relatively youthful audience.

Created by Rockne S. O'Bannon ("Farscape") and premiering Tuesday, "Cult" is not only a TV show within a TV show, but it also makes savvy use of the impact of social media on the cultivation (sorry) of fans for certain television shows and film franchises.

As the premiere episode begins, we think we're watching a show about a young woman named Kelly Collins (Alona Tal) whose sister, Meadow (Shauna Johannesen), has gone missing. She suspects Meadow and her husband have been sucked into a cult headed by the messianic Billy Grimm (Roger Knepper). Things proceed apace for a few minutes, pulling us into the mystery, seducing us to suspend credibility, when, all of a sudden ... it's just a TV show.

What I mean is, it's a TV show called "Cult" within the actual TV show called "Cult." To add to the confusion, both shows are on the CW.

In the so-called real world, a disgraced reporter named Jeff Sefton (Matthew Davis) is trying to cope with his paranoid younger brother, Nate (James Pizzinato), who is convinced he is being stalked by the cult at the black heart of the TV show within a TV show. When Nate goes off the radar, Jeff finds an ally from the crew of the show within a show named Skye (Jessica Lucas) in the search for his brother.

Don't worry: The parallel-universe thing is meant to be confusing, which is why we buy into it as various elements from one "Cult" are mirrored or referenced in the other "Cult."

Social media plays a big role in virtually every contemporary TV show, of course, but it's especially vital, if not viral, for shows like "Cult." There are entire websites and chat rooms devoted to shows - not just who's the "fang" favorite in the cast of "Vampire Diaries," but what fans may think the significance was of the single blue bulb in that red-lighted restaurant sign. And it's not just supernatural shows either: One blog famously tries to find and analyze meaning from the wardrobe and color scheme of "Mad Men" on a weekly basis.

TV PR departments push these virtual discussions at every opportunity, and the blogosphere's influence on television is accordingly considerable.

It's just possible that the parallel worlds of the two "Cult" shows intersect at a subterranean cafe called the Fan Domain, where bloggers and fans tap away at laptops at all hours of the day analyzing the show within a show, and perhaps influencing one if not both shows.

Pirandello famously probed the elusive boundary between reality and fiction, or the imagination, in his 1921 play "Six Characters in Search of an Author," using a kind of play-within-a-play format. The actors playing the characters created by the playwright are interrupted on stage by the arrival of other actors playing six half-finished characters searching for the author to fill in the blanks. By the end of the play, the author isn't sure which characters are "real" and which aren't, but of course, since Pirandello created all of them, no one is real, including the playwright.

Poor Pirandello had to come up with all of this the old-fashioned way, by hiring actors to play actors playing characters. Imagine if he'd had social media to work with.

"Cult" could work over time, but it could also implode because it's a very high-concept show. In other words, it depends heavily on the gimmick of the show within a show, refracted by social media. Beyond the gimmick, will there be enough to maintain our interest? If not, "Cult" could easily wind up as one TV show in search of an audience.